Sheets of satin swallow me up into a world of soft white sunlight. Hazy dreams of the perfect day fill my mind for hours on end.

The world of weddings has always been too far to grasp. They were unreachable fantasies I could never understand. Instead, I found myself gluing magazine clippings into my journals of the big white dresses a bride wore, and as I got older, adding more dream photos to an ongoing Pinterest board titled “Wedding!!” that would soon branch off into subsections of every wedding detail. An A-line gown, my grandparents' farm as a backdrop, my best friends surrounding me in pastels, a dance floor that lasted until the early morning - it was a perfectly curated dream. Oh, and I suppose a spouse was found somewhere in the midst of it all, though that was blurry, and unimportant to the gala of a wedding.

The summer I turned 19 was picture perfect. Reuniting with my best friends after a year away in university was more than I could ask for. Lounging under the sun with the girls I had grown up with, it was our last teenage summer. It was incredibly peaceful, until my best friend asked if she could pay me 35 dollars.

Let me tell you, dear reader, the shock factor of 35 dollars. My best friend had been dating her boyfriend since we were juniors in high school despite our continuous pleas to break-up with him because he was not nearly as interesting as us, her closest friends. Like any high school sweethearts, talks of marriage and children were always being tossed around, but it wasn’t actually going to happen. Right? Well, for 35 dollars, the girl, who I had played the flute with at 11 and cried my heart out to at 17, wanted me to go online and get legally ordained.

At 19 years old, she wanted to marry her boyfriend of barely two years and wanted me to be the one to officiate the ceremony.

I was jolted awake by what I had considered the secondary aspect of a wedding: the marriage. Although I had heard it so many times before, it was still a word I was unfamiliar with. The Oxford English Dictionary defines marriage as “the legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.” I define marriage as “the thing that gets my family and friends to show up to my elaborately themed and overtly fashionable dance party.” Why would my friend want to bind herself by law to a boy at a tiny, no-fuss ceremony? The point of marriage is the party you get from it, and maybe a gorgeous ring, too, if you’re lucky.

As I tumbled into the mysterious world of weddings, it truly felt like I had been sold a lie as a little girl. The picture that hung in both my grandmother’s bathroom and my own declaring “The Wedding” as one of the five best days of a girl’s life was completely ridiculous.

Maybe I was scared of losing my best friend to her boyfriend so soon. Perhaps it was my own fear of commitment (give me some grace, I’m still in school). The film Mamma Mia was pretty convincing in their rendition of “Dancing Queen” that singing with your best friends was the most important part of a wedding.

No matter how romantically connected I am to another person, they are never able to take the place of my friends. Recently, another high school couple told me that I feel this way because I haven’t met the one. They told me there was something so beautiful and comforting about knowing someone always had your back and understood your entire being. Upon hearing this, I thought back to my closest friendships, and without a doubt in my mind I knew they completely knew my true heart. I suppose a romantic relationship calls for a different intimacy, and yet, I don’t find myself daydreaming about being in one.

Let me be clear, I am not opposed to finding a long-term relationship, but I struggle with the idea that I am expected to find someone who will become my forever best friend in replacement to the women that I grew up with. The women that knew me at 12 when I had braces and a tendency to cry over spilled milk; the same women who still wanted to stick with me through life. How could there be someone better than the girls who I have spent hours laughing and crying with? There is nuance, sure. Marriage is just a different kind of relationship, but I find myself daydreaming of living with my best friends in a flat rather than looking out a window watching children run around in the grass.

I fear that I have put too much pressure on my friendships. Am I suffocating my friends? Do they fear that one day they will move on and I will be stuck in my teenage mindset longing for late night drives with them? Are my priorities too skewed? Where will I fit into their lives when they get picked off one-by-one into the cult of married couples?

What I sought during these hours of planning the biggest party of my life was not the partnership that would transcend all; it was just a party. With my bachelorette board more than three times the size of my wedding board, there has been an emphasis on the feminine friendships I have cultivated through my life. I fear it was a collection of imagery as a last hurrah to the women I had gotten to know so beautifully before our final goodbyes into marriage.

Society places so much pressure on couples in monogamous, long-term relationships, yet when I daydream into the future, I do not fear a life without a partner. What haunts me through the night is that I will be the only person left without that love. I will watch all of my friends go through milestones together, and I will be beyond happy for them, but as I go home each night, alone, I will be slowly forgotten and left behind in a life of solitude.

As the summer came to an end, my call to gain the legal certification to marry off my best friend was put on hold, albeit my fears of marriage were not. Wedding season was finally winding down, and I had been invited to a shocking zero. These parties are still a mystery, but my dreams are not. A whirlwind romance leading me down the aisle is nowhere on my future timeline. There are still too many days to be spent lounging around with my best friends. Alas, it could be possible that I only want to host a themed dinner party without marriage on the table.

Written by Thea Findlay, Photography: Nadely Abdalla, Social Media: Chelsea Rainwater, Styling: Sheyla Hidalgo

I Do, I Do, I Actually Don’t